After a particularly poor fourth quarter, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready attempted to compare the digital pinboarding site to ChatGPT, a popular AI chatbot.
Ready claimed that the site had higher search volume than ChatGPT to highlight its potential as a unique search destination. Third-party data shows that ChatGPT sees 75 billion searches per month, while Pinterest sees 80 billion searches and 1.7 billion clicks, he said.
“This makes us one of the largest search destinations in the world. And importantly, more than half of those searches are commercial in nature, I think about 2% (of ChatGPT searches),” Ready added.
In the fourth quarter, Pinterest missed expectations for both revenue and earnings per share. Revenue was $1.32 billion, compared to $1.33 billion expected, and earnings per share were 67 cents, compared to the expected 69 cents. It also forecast first-quarter 2026 revenue to be between $951 million and $971 million, lower than the $980 million expected.
The company blamed the shortfall on large advertisers cutting spending, particularly in Europe, and problems within the housing category due to new furniture tariffs implemented in October. He said this trend could worsen further in the first quarter.
Surprisingly, Pinterest missed out on revenue despite its user base growing faster than expected. The company reported monthly active users of 619 million, up 12% year-over-year, when Wall Street had predicted 613 million users.
Shares fell 20% in after-hours trading.
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Pinterest has long worked to translate high usage of its platform into advertising dollars. That’s because Pinterest users often come to Pinterest to plan and dream, not to shop and buy. These problems may become more serious in the AI era. This is especially true as advertisers divert their funds to platforms with a clearer purchase intent, such as chatbot requests for product recommendations.
When asked how Pinterest will navigate the shift to AI-powered shopping, Ready pointed to the company’s visual search, discovery and personalization capabilities that point users to relevant products when they open the app.
“We are helping our customers complete this commercial journey without having to enter a single prompt,” he said. He also noted that Pinterest has benefited from easier payment flows through its partnership with Amazon. He said customers don’t yet seem ready to let AI make purchases for them, but he said Pinterest will be ready when that time comes.
“This is actually going to be one of the easiest commercial journeys to solve,” he argued.
